Gay in Uganda

Not long after a Ugandan tabloid newspaper demanded that he be hanged for being homosexual, activist David Kato was found beaten to death at his home last week. Kato, who served as advocacy officer for the country’s most prominent gay-rights group, Sexual Minorities Uganda, had complained of intense harassment after a tabloid called The Rolling Stone (no relation to the American magazine) published the names, addresses, and photos of Ugandans whom it had identified as gay. The words “Hang Them” were on the front page, and the article alleged both that gay Ugandans were infected with a deadly disease and that they were “recruiting” children. Though a high court had issued an injunction against the newspaper, forbidding it from publishing more articles that targeted gays, activists and gay Ugandans have received an onslaught of intimidation since late last year. And while police are investigating the murder, officials claim that it was only the result of a robbery, despite the death threats against Kato.

Being gay is a criminal offense in thirty-seven countries in Africa, including Uganda, and many traditional communities across the continent are religious, socially conservative, and wary of homosexuality. But it is only in recent years that a tide of anti-gay hate has hit the continent, most notably in Uganda. In the same period, ties have strengthened between African religious and political leaders and the American religious right. The Anti-Homosexuality Bill, which is still before Uganda’s parliament, was the result of informal collaboration between The Family, a group of American government officials, corporate executives, and non-profit heads associated with the religious right, such as Kansas Governor Sam Brownback and the businessman and Congress member Heath Shuler, and Ugandan politicians, such as parliament member David Bahati. The bill’s drafters, a group of Ugandan ministers and politicians, have cited the Americans’ influence. It imposes life imprisonment—and, in some cases, the death penalty—for homosexual acts.

When I moved to Uganda four and a half years ago, homosexuality seemed to be almost an irrelevant issue. My gay friends, both Ugandan and expatriate, walked around freely, going out to dark, pulsing bars that we knew to be safe spaces, regardless of one’s sexuality. Gay-rights protests erupted occasionally and freely, and were nearly always peaceful. But evangelical Christianity was also erupting in Uganda, through the swell of visits from mega-church pastors from abroad and the building of local worship houses that tumbled over each other, each claiming to have the secret to eternal salvation, for the price of a substantial tithe. Pastor Rick Warren, who has visited the country many times, has also spread his anti-homosexuality message to local leaders.

In the spring of 2009, eight months after I left, a group of American evangelicals ran a series of workshops on how to “revert” gay people to heterosexuality and claimed that gay men performed sexual acts on teenage boys. “David’s death is a result of the hatred planted in Uganda by U.S. evangelicals in 2009,” Val Kalende, the chairwoman of one of Uganda’s gay-rights groups, said in a statement, according to the Times. “The Ugandan government and the so-called U.S. evangelicals must take responsibility for David’s blood.” From neighboring Kenya’s recent edict that gay residents be arrested to the imprisonment of a same-sex couple in Malawi last year, this crusade against gay Africans may be unprecedented.

At Kato’s funeral, a fight broke out after the pastor at the service began rallying against homosexuality. Mourners seized the microphone away from him, and police were forced to escort the pastor from the ceremony. Even at the hour of his burial, Kato’s former colleagues lamented, the slain activist still wasn’t allowed to be at peace.

Alexis Okeowo is a contributing writer for The New Yorker. She is working on a book about people standing up to extremism in Africa.